Authors: Hilary Bonner
He shrugged. ‘Just a figure of speech, Karen, that’s all. I was only trying to convince you that you really have no need to investigate Hangridge. We’re the British army, Karen, and that puts us on the same side as you. The Devonshire Fusiliers is a wonderful regiment, with a proud history of defending queen and country, dating back to the Napoleonic wars. We’re the good guys. And you’d surely be much better off chasing criminals, rather than wasting your time and the taxpayer’s money here. That’s my advice and I really do suggest you take it.’
He grinned to soften his words, and there was nothing at all in his voice to suggest a threat. And yet, she felt threatened. Or, at the very least, she felt that she was being warned off.
‘I never stop chasing criminals, Gerry,’ she said, rising abruptly from her chair.
As she did so she removed the little silver dagger brooch from her jacket lapel, where he had pinned it earlier, and tossed it casually onto the desk before him.
‘Yours, I think.’
‘But Karen, we had such fun this morning.’ He picked the brooch up and held it out to her. ‘Surely you can keep this small memento?’
She ignored him and turned to leave. At the door she twisted around.
‘And you can forget Sunday,’ she told him over her shoulder. ‘I don’t think I’d better risk compromising myself any further, do you?’
His face was a picture of wide-eyed innocence.
‘Oh, come on, Karen …’
She left the room quickly, opening the door and closing it with a bang. It gave her some satisfaction just to cut off the sound of his voice.
The information Margaret Slade had given Kelly was dynamite. This was turning into a major story and Kelly had never stopped being excited about stories.
He felt he had now gathered together several parts of a jigsaw, but he knew that there were lots more still missing. In the case of each death, the families of the young soldiers concerned had certain information which alone amounted to very little. However, when you put all these little bits of information together, the possible implications were mind-boggling.
Could the culture of bullying, of which the army all too often stood accused, simply have gone too far at Hangridge? Could there even be a psychopath on the loose within the Devonshire Fusiliers? Or was he allowing his imagination to take him a step too far?
He sat in his car, parked outside Mrs Slade’s flat, thinking it all through. Kelly felt considerable compassion for Margaret Slade, and for her daughter, just as he did for the Connellys in Glasgow and for Mrs Foster in Torquay. Somehow or other, these people had all been caught up in something that was beginning to look increasingly sinister. He was determined to do his best to solve the mystery.
He made himself a roll-up while he contemplated his next move. He might be able to find out more about this young soldier called Trevor, by getting Sally to troll through inquest reports in the
Argus’
library. But it would be much quicker to find out exactly who Trevor was and how he had died, if Karen Meadows would help. Although he had, not for the first time, ignored her entreaties for him to take no further action without her approval, he thought she might forgive him when he told her what he’d found out.
First he dialled her mobile, but it was switched to voicemail. Then he tried her number at Torquay police station, but was told that she was out. He left messages for her to call him and then set off on the long drive back to Torquay. It was just after 6.30 p.m. when he arrived in the seaside town, and Karen had still not called him back. He tried both numbers again, with the same results as earlier. He wondered fleetingly if she was avoiding him. After all, he knew he was leading her, and himself, into deep water.
He made a decision then. If Karen wouldn’t come to him, as it were, then he would go to Karen. He had, in any case, never had any intention of talking to her on the phone about what he had found out. He drove straight to Torquay police station and, remarkably, managed to find a parking space in Lansdowne Lane, just outside the dance school, from which he could see the entrance to the CID offices on his left and the big gateway leading into the car park at the back of Torquay police station, and the door to the custody suite, on his right. He got out of the car and walked towards the gateway. The actual gates that had once been there had disappeared years previously. Not for the first time, Kelly reflected on the apparent lack of security. There was closed-circuit TV in operation, of course, and the various doors leading into the station were all secure. It none
the less amused Kelly to amble casually into the back yard of Torquay nick and have a snoop around. His purpose on this occasion was to check that Karen’s car was there. It was. The distinctive blue MG was parked in its usual place. Kelly was not surprised that she was still working. Indeed, he did not think she ever left the station much before seven, and that was on a short day. He resolved to catch her when she left for home.
His mobile rang just as he was climbing back into his own MG. He checked the display panel, wondering if Karen had called him back at last. Instead, his caller turned out to be Nick.
‘I’ve been out of touch all day, Dad. I just picked up your message about Moira,’ Nick began. ‘Any change?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Kelly was starkly aware that he didn’t really know. He hadn’t been in touch since leaving the hospice that morning. But nobody had called him. So he assumed that no news was good news.
‘I can’t get down to Torquay till the day after tomorrow at the earliest, do you think that will be all right?’
Kelly knew what he meant. Nick, too, did not want to put his true meaning into words. The question he was trying to ask was whether or not Moira would still be alive. And Kelly didn’t have a clue.
‘I’m sure it will,’ he said automatically.
‘Right, I’ll see you then.’
‘Yes.’
For once, the conversation between father and son was stilted. Impending death had that effect, Kelly reckoned.
For a moment he thought about discussing the Hangridge situation with his former soldier son, something he would certainly like to do at some stage. But definitely not on the phone, he thought. And not on the back of that awkward exchange about Moira. Indeed, it did not seem to be possible to talk about anything other than poor Moira. And when there was really nothing more that could be said about her, father and son ended the call in a kind of glum, mutual consent.
Not wishing to dwell further on Moira and her approaching death, Kelly fished in his pocket for his notebook and began to chronicle the events of the past few days, carefully assimilating the jottings he had made while talking to the various parents of the three dead soldiers whom he had so far met.
He was still a journalist at heart, however much he tried to fight against it. He told himself this would be his last story, and that it was going to be a huge one. He also told himself, that, for once, this would be a story which might do some good. This was going to be a classic example of true campaigning journalism, of the sort that he had gone into newspapers to pursue, in the days when he had still been young enough to believe in his own dreams.
As he wrote, he contemplated what he would do with the finished article. He was quite sure that he hadn’t uncovered one half of it yet, but, on the other hand, there was enough of a story in what he had already – at least three, probably four, deaths of young soldiers at Hangridge in fifteen months, and one of them, to his certain first-hand knowledge, in suspicious circumstances – to guarantee him publication in almost any national newspaper. However,
if he went into print at this stage, the entire British press corps would then unleash its top investigative reporters onto the story.
The ramifications were, after all, enormous. At the very least, the army was surely guilty of a shocking lack of care at Hangridge. At worst, something very nasty was going on and, according to Karen Meadows, the army was already closing ranks.
One way and another, there was so much more that Kelly wanted to do, wanted to find out about, before he started to market the story. He needed to research some more military statistics for a start, like the number of alleged suicides and accidental deaths there had been in the army throughout the UK in recent years. He also wondered if finding the family of the fourth soldier would lead him to yet more surprises.
But, as he wrote, he became surprised at how much he already had to say. This could possibly be the biggest story of his life. Kelly could feel it in his bones.
As soon as she arrived back at her office from Hangridge, Karen Meadows attempted to contact the clerk to the coroner’s court to ask him for the records of the inquest on Jocelyn Slade, something which, upon reflection, she probably should have done before taking off to confront Parker-Brown. But she just hadn’t been able to wait.
A recorded message told her that the coroner’s court was in session and that the clerk would return her call as soon as possible. She left a brief message.
It was hard for her to think about anything other than Hangridge. And she was still reflecting on her meeting with Gerry Parker-Brown and going over
and over in her mind all that Kelly had so far told her, when to her utter amazement, just before six o’clock, she received an email from the CO of the Devonshire Fusiliers, repeating his invitation for her to join him for Sunday lunch.
‘I know you were upset earlier and I do understand. But can’t we at least try to keep our personal lives separate from our work? I have so enjoyed spending time with you, and I’d really love to see you on Sunday as we had planned. I do so hope we can still meet.’
Smooth, arrogant bastard, thought Karen.
She pressed delete at once. She couldn’t believe the man’s cheek. One thing was absolutely certain, she was risking no more unofficial meetings of any kind with Colonel Gerrard Parker-Brown. He was covering something up, she was quite convinced of that now. She also remained pretty sure that he had been using her all along. And, with his repeated Sunday invitation, was, quite incredibly she felt, actually still trying to use her. The very thought of it made her blazing mad.
And it was because of her state of mind that she did not want any further contact with John Kelly for a bit. Indeed, as soon as Kelly’s name had flashed on her mobile earlier, she had not only deliberately ignored his call but also instructed the clerk who answered her office phone to field any further calls from him. She was not yet ready for Kelly. She had inquiries of her own to make and quite possibly a major investigation to launch, one that was not going to be easy. The sort of investigation that makes and breaks careers.
Karen was no coward, and certainly no jobsworth. She was not at all adverse to taking risks. And, by
God, how she wanted to give Parker-Brown the shock of his smug smooth life! None the less, she was starkly aware that she had probably already taken quite enough risks in her career to last most senior police officers a lifetime. On more than one occasion she had put herself in a situation where her job had been on the line, and at least twice John Kelly had been involved.
And now, she realised, she was on the brink of diving into the deep end yet again. She knew that she should not make another move on this one until she had authorisation from the chief constable to delve further into military matters. However, if that authorisation did not come, Karen also knew, all too well, that she would probably not be able to stop herself taking some kind of action.
Her reflections were interrupted by having to attend a meeting concerning liaison between uniform and CID, and Karen, forcing herself to put Hangridge out of her mind, at least for the time being, made her way over to the main station about half an hour before Kelly had arrived outside.
When her meeting finally ended, shortly after 7.30, she left through the back door next to the custody suite. And only then did she remember that the coroner’s clerk had not returned her call.
Kelly, who wished he was able to compile his novel with half the fluency he had found while attempting to write down the Hangridge story so far, was in mid-sentence when, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Karen’s MG pull out of the police station car park and turn left into Lansdowne Lane towards him. How the hell had she got across the road from CID
without him noticing, he wondered. Then, with that surprising alacrity he so often displayed for a man of his size, years, and lifestyle he swung open his car door, jumped out and stepped smartly into the road in front of Karen’s car, causing her to break sharply in order to avoid hitting him.
She lurched to a halt with a screeching of tyre rubber, wound down the window of her car and leaned out. Kelly continued to stand stoically in front of the little MG. He expected an earful and he got it.
‘Exactly what the fuck do you think you are doing, you moron?’ she yelled.
‘I had to see you, Karen,’ he began.
‘OK, but is there any particular reason why you also wanted to kill yourself today?’
‘Uh, I was afraid of missing you,’ Kelly responded lamely. ‘I’ve been trying to get you on the phone all afternoon. I thought you were deliberately dodging me …’
‘And so you decided to doorstep me, did you, you arsehole? I don’t suppose it occurred to you that I might just be busy?’
This was a blatant lie, of course. Karen most certainly had been avoiding him. But she was always inclined to be inventive when she was in full flow.
‘I think you’ll forgive me when I tell you everything I’ve found out.’ Kelly gathered his courage, walked round to the side of Karen’s car and leaned against it, looking down at her steadily. But Karen was not, it seemed, in an altogether forgiving mood.
‘Listen, Kelly,’ she countered. ‘I haven’t got time for you in my head, right now. You’ve handed me a potential atomic bomb. There are procedures …’
‘Since when have you wasted time worrying about procedures?’
‘Since I came close to losing my job, the last time I got involved with you and what you were up to, and the time before that.’